Bram Stoker - Not Dracula

I haven't read Stoker since middle or high school, though exposure to adaptations of course is hardly slim.  The thing, of course, is that all the adaptations focus on That One Novel, and the resultant sensibility, that there's really not much need to *read* him (admittedly this may only be my issue ...) leaves him as an author whose work, oddly enough, is far less regarded nor considered than the movies and other works inspired by it.

Which is a shame, because his ability to construct, using the epistolary and other "documentary" indirect storytelling forms than straighforward omniscient or POV narrative is very good.  He's also interestingly observant of his times (the interest is not least in the lens of a century's time and social sensibilities' having gone by).

I have been going about for the last few days amongst the mountaineers and trying to make their acquaintance.  It is a tough job; and I can see that there will be nothing but to stick to it.  They are in reality the most primitive people I ever met—the most fixed to their own ideas, which belong to centuries back.  I can understand now what people were like in England—not in Queen Elizabeth’s time, for that was civilized time, but in the time of Coeur-de-Lion, or even earlier—and all the time with the most absolute mastery of weapons of precision.  Every man carries a rifle—and knows how to use it, too.  I do believe they would rather go without their clothes than their guns if they had to choose between them.
***
I do not think I have seen a single man (or married man either) without his rifle since I came here.

The passage above (please note that the "..." line indicates that there is a passage omitted between one paragraph and the last) comes from The Lady of the Shroud, in the public domain an available at Project Gutenberg.  Reading this just now, after the tragedies ending 2012, tends to underline how deeply provincial This Great Country can be.

Literarily speaking, though, I do recommend Bram for a read.  Every time I go back to novels 100-250 years old, I'm struck by their wit.  It's unfortunate and deeply trite, that 18th/19th/early 20th century work has a reputation for being dusty and lame, because its survival isn't merely a function of age, but of the nature of storytelling itself.  Beyond a story's own interest, its telling brings along with it humor, the quirks of language and contemporary culture, and observations which are necessarily singular in some way.  These are the ingredients which leaven the whole, which make stories memorable and worthwhile.

And Bram, in particular, is a breezy read.  His works aren't lengthy, even by *our* contemporary standards, and they move along nicely - which is a trick, given that the conceit (epistolary, documentary - *indirect*) might by nature almost be distancing.  In Lady, he manages to create stretches of more familiar POV storytelling, but the opening "book" sets up the whole with an ingenious series of pieces put together not only to explicate our scene, but even "Easter egg" some callbacks which the novel itself refers back to.  Take a look - and come back here and let me know what you think, too ...